Safeguard by Nancy Kress Page A

would splash in the pond. That might be fun.
    Except that nothing was as much fun as it used to be. Li didn't know why, but it was true.
    Eventually Kim stopped screaming and they let her go. Jana folded and refolded the white paper bag Taney had left her, making pretty shapes. The sky overhead and beside the Grove darkened. The feeder with its three untouched bowls and one empty one sank into the ground. The blankets rose, clean even though last night Kim had shit hers again.
    The four children wrapped themselves in blankets and lay down on the grass. Within minutes all were asleep in the circling grove of antiseptic palm trees that produced no fruit, and whose fronds never rustled in the motionless air.
* * * *
    "Two-and-a-half enclosed acres. Double-built dome construction, translucent and virtually impenetrable. Negative air pressure with triple filters. Inside, semi-tropical flora, no fauna, monitors throughout. Life-maintenance machinery to be concentrated by the east wall within a circle of trees, including the input screen. All instructional programs to feature only cartoon characters in biohazard suits, to minimize curiosity about other people."
    Katherine said, “Two-and-a-half acres isn't sufficient for a self-sustaining biosphere."
    "Of course not, ma'am,” the high-clearance DOD engineer said, barely concealing his impatience. “An outside computer will control all plant-maintenance and atmospheric functions."
    "And personnel?"
    "Once the biosphere is up and running, it will need little human oversight. Both functional and contact personnel will be your agency's responsibility. Our involvement extends only to the construction and maintenance of the cage."
    "Don't call it that!"
    The engineer, whom Katherine knew she should be thanking instead of reprimanding, merely shrugged. His blue eyes glittered with dislike. “Whatever you say, ma'am."
* * * *
    Three days later, Taney didn't come.
    It was her day . But lunch came up on the feeder, and then dinner, and then the sky got dark, and the leaving door never opened. Kim sat staring at it the whole day, her mouth hanging open until Jana pressed it closed. Kim couldn't talk or do much of anything, but somehow she always knew when it was Taney's day. So she sat, while the others splashed in the pond and pretended to have fun.
    All at once the water in the pond gave a small hiccup and sloshed gently onto the sandy beach.
    "Did you feel that?” Sudie said. “The ground moved!"
    "Ground can't move,” Li said, because he was the leader. But it had. He waited for the ground to do something else but it just lay there, ground under water. Li got out of the pond.
    "Where are you going?” Jana said.
    "Feeder time,” Li said, although it wasn't.
    They pulled Kim to her feet and ran. By the time they reached the Grove, their naked bodies were dry. Li could feel his hair, which Taney sometimes cut, curling wetly on the back of his neck. Jana's hair, shorter than his, stood up in yellow fluff that Li liked. Maybe Jana would want to play bodies with him tonight.
    They sat in a circle under the trees, hungry and pleasantly tired from splashing in the pond. Sudie studied the keypad under the screen, each button with a little picture on it, and chose the cartoon about four children helping each other to make sand paintings. Li was tired of that cartoon, although when it first appeared, they'd all loved it. Days and days had been spent making sand paintings with the many-colored sands on the beach by the pond.
    The cartoon played, but only Kim really watched it. The feeder rose and—
    "The bowls are empty!” Jana cried.
    Li leaped up and examined the four wooden bowls. Empty . How could that be? Why would the feeder bring empty bowls?
    The ground moved gently beneath them.
    "The feeder is broken!” Sudie jumped up and ran to the keypad. Each of its buttons had a picture of a cartoon showing the right thing to do for eating, for playing, for cleaning themselves, for fixing